Nothing, absolutely nothing, against starting pitchers. Until recently, Tim Stauffer was one. He still hopes to be one again someday, perhaps even someday soon.

It does have its benefits, the regimen and routine of pitching every fifth game, the luxury of being able to rest the body and formulate a plan for the next outing. If all is going well, you can use pitches thrown in the first inning to set up the same hitter in the fourth or fifth innings. None of this is to mention the acclaim and huge bucks given a proven starter.

Middle relief? Long relief? Not so much.

But it has its bennies, too.

“Adrenaline,” said Stauffer, the Padres’ right-hander. “The adrenaline flows. The intensity level gets up there pretty high pretty fast.”

Stauffer is very new to the big league business of the bullpen. Since the Padres made him the fourth overall draft choice of 2003, he’s been a starting pitcher, and each of his previous stints with the parent club in San Diego had him summoned from the minors to take a spot in the rotation. Throughout some serious shoulder issues, including a surgery that cost him all of 2008, Stauffer was largely considered a starter.

When he finally made an Opening Day roster — an exasperating, arduous process lasting nearly seven years, making him the second-longest tenured player in the entire San Diego system — it was as a much-relieved relief pitcher.

Since then, Stauffer’s thrown a five-hit, seven-strikeout, eight-inning shutout. It’s just taken him four combined appearances to do it.

By no means have the Padres scuttled the thought of Stauffer ever landing back in the Padres rotation, because he does have the four-pitch repertoire and extensive experience as a starter, including 14 big league starts (with a 4-7 record and 3.58 ERA) in his comeback from surgery last year.

But if he’s proved to be a solid addition to the bullpen in a vital role — the reliever who can go many more than one inning per outing, no small thing when you think of all the times the Padres wind up in extra-extra-inning games — Stauffer’s also found out something about himself and relief work.

“Psyche-wise, I’m probably more suited to the bullpen,” Stauffer said. “Sometimes I think a little too much and it gets me into some trouble.”

He wasn’t just talking about the four or more days between performances for starters, either, although Stauffer does allow that his focus is more acute when he shows up at the ballpark every day with the possibility that he’ll appear in that game. Whereas starting pitchers can sometimes approach games like projects, thinking and pitching in the long-term, relief work has all the immediacy of tightrope walking. The next move is the most important one.

“Get in, get out,” Stauffer said. “It’s a one-inning game. Put up the zeros. Be aggressive. Give it everything you’ve got, every time.”

Stauffer’s got the fastball, cutter, curve and changeup. As a starter, Stauffer occasionally would get caught up in making the right choice. In the competition to win a job out of spring training, though, pitching coach Darren Balsley said there was a noticeable uptick in Stauffer’s aggressiveness in Cactus League games.

Since he was out of options, an attempt to send Stauffer back to Portland would have exposed him to the waiver wire, and starting pitchers with Stauffer’s stuff generally get plucked by another team desperate to fill out their own rotations. Hence, he got sent to the Padres’ pen, albeit one of the majors’ best relief corps.

“It wasn’t a concern coming out of the spring, but in the back of my head, I was curious to see if he could do it, how he responds,” Balsley said. “He’s got the work ethic and he’s in real good shape. I’m not gonna say I’m surprised, but I’m pleased with how he’s gone from being a starter to showing the resiliency in the bullpen.”

Resiliency got Stauffer to the majors — and kept him coming back. Certainly, there’s been ample opportunity in the many years since for the Padres to give up on him and for Stauffer to give up on baseball.

Effectively, Stauffer started all over after the 2008 surgery, and he did so in a bullpen. After posting a 1.89 ERA in a dozen relief appearances with Double-A San Antonio, Stauffer again was stationed in the Portland rotation, where he went 2-1 with a 2.35 ERA in four starts.

Hurried to San Francisco to make an emergency start, Stauffer struck out seven Giants in seven innings, and the 2-1 loss proved just a forecast of the mixed results to come in his ensuing starts.

There are those around Stauffer who can relate to the transition he’s going through now. Before he went from signing a minor-league contract to being the Padres’ staff workhorse last year, Kevin Correia basically spent from 2003-2008 shuttling between not only the San Francisco Giants and the minors, but also the rotation and the bullpen.

Padres manager Bud Black, a former pitcher, recalled going from Opening Day starter for the Kansas City Royals in 1986 to a bullpen role after just four outings.

For his part, Black thinks there are aspects of pitching out of the bullpen that should help Stauffer as a starter, a heightened sense of every pitch’s magnitude and purpose.

The sounds are different, too.

“Just being in the bullpen, hearing the phone ring, then hearing your name called,” Stauffer said, “that gets you going pretty quick.”